Here are excerpts from four online articles that discuss the history
of theories and treatment of pain. You may want to read the entire
articles; there's some fascinating material in them.
"Ancient civilizations recorded on stone tablets accounts of pain and
the treatments used: pressure, heat, water, and sun. Early humans
related pain to evil, magic, and demons. Relief of pain was the
responsibility of sorcerers, shamans, priests, and priestesses, who
used herbs, rites, and ceremonies as their treatments.
The Greeks and Romans were the first to advance a theory of sensation,
the idea that the brain and nervous system have a role in producing
the perception of pain. But it was not until the Middle Ages and well
into the Renaissance-the 1400s and 1500s-that evidence began to
accumulate in support of these theories. Leonardo da Vinci and his
contemporaries came to believe that the brain was the central organ
responsible for sensation. Da Vinci also developed the idea that the
spinal cord transmits sensations to the brain.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the study of the body-and the
senses-continued to be a source of wonder for the world's
philosophers. In 1664, the French philosopher René Descartes described
what to this day is still called a 'pain pathway.' Descartes
illustrated how particles of fire, in contact with the foot, travel to
the brain and he compared pain sensation to the ringing of a bell."
MedicineNet: Chronic Pain
http://www.medicinenet.com/Chronic_Pain/page1.htm
"In early civilizations, the times of myths and Gods, when spears or
arrows entered the body, people thought that 'evil' magical fluids or
demons entered the body and caused pain. The Shaman (from the word
saman - meaning 'to know') or sorcerer were to rid these evil spirits
from people. They would make wounds in people to allow the demons to
leave or would suck the evil spirits out themselves... The early
Egyptians/Babylonians considered the heart the center of all
sensations. They felt that when people were vomiting, sneezing,
urinating or sweating, the demons were escaping from the body...
About the 5th century BC, Hippocrates became influential and stated
that illness was a natural process. This turned the healing thought
away from the spiritual to physical causes...
Around 300 BC, some challenged Aristotle?s theory that the brain was
the center of all sensation. Around this same time, Herophilus and
Erasistratus, through dissections, thought that the brain had a system
of nerves, 2 types, one for movement and one for feeling. 200 AD Greek
physician, Galen, dissected and found the brain to be the center with
many nerves connected. These ideas fell with the decline of the Roman
Empire...
In the 6th through the 10th centuries, the Western World was under the
influence of the church. Thomas Aquinas, a Medieval
theologian/philosopher (1200-1300 AD) thought the human condition was
a result of 'Original Sin' (which was man?s separation from God due to
Adam?s sin in the Garden of Eden). Death and body defects were
punishment for this original sin."
University of Iowa College of Nursing: Pain in Ancient Times
http://www.nursing.uiowa.edu/sites/PedsPain/GenePain/Anciense.htm
"The Egyptians believed that dead spirits entered the living body
through the nostrils or ears and caused pain. They used the induction
of vomiting, urination, sweating, or sneezing to treat the pain. They
relieved a headache by boring holes into the skull to let the spirit
out. For another treatment, they used an electric fish from the Nile
River. They placed the fish over a painful area much like the
electrical stimulator of today.
Buddhists of India held that pain was caused by frustrated desires and
that the heart was the root of all the pain. Greeks believed the brain
was the center of pain, sensation, and reason.
Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) was called 'the Father of Medicine.' As a
Greek physician, he laid the foundations of scientific medicine by
freeing medical study from the constraints of philosophical
speculation and superstition. He is traditionally but inaccurately
considered the author of the Hippocratic Oath. Hippocrates taught that
pain was disequilibrium of four humors - blood, phlegm, yellow bile,
and black bile. Around this same time, Plato (429-347 B.C.), a Greek
philosopher, taught that the heart and liver were the centers of
sensation and that movement of atoms within them caused pain."
Nursing CEU: Contemporary Pain Management
http://www.nursingceu.com/NCEU/courses/conpain/
"Greek philosophers disagreed about whether pain was sensed by the
heart or the brain but they understood pain in both spiritual and
physical terms. The Greek empiricists, who based their knowledge on
trial and error, excelled in surgery and pharmacology...
Times changed, by the early middle ages, it was trendy to be
dismissive of the ideas of the ancient Greeks. Western medicine lapsed
back to tribal folklore, mingled with poorly understood remnants of
classical learning.
During the renaissance, intellectuals looked down on their
predecessors from the middle ages. They embraced again the rational
ideas of classical Greece. Greater freedom of thought, increased
communication (the printing press came along ) and a more secular
society, allowed a rational scientific approach to flourish. In the
next few hundred years, this approach facilitated great advances in
understanding and treating pain and disease. In the 15th century, Rene
Descarte was the first to describe the human body in terms of a
machine. He described pain as 'fast moving particles of fire [that]
disturb the filaments in the nerve.' His cause-effect account of pain
was an assault on traditional ways of understanding pain and the
world. It was hugely successful, for a variety of reasons, including
its utility and its 'fit' with the developing intellectual trends of
scientific rationalism and the organic model."
Mark Grant's Chronic Pain Pages: A BRIEF HISTORY OF IDEAS ABOUT PAIN
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~markgra/Information_For_Therapists/BRIEF_HISTORY.html
Google search strategy:
Google Web Search: "history of pain"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22history+of+pain
I hope this helps. Thanks for an interesting question that wasn't
painful to research! :-D
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
